I was reminded, by Einat Wilf (Jewish People Policy
Institute) and Jonathan Schanzer (Foundation for Defense of Democracies), of
the sheer hypocrisy of European parliaments who, while they vote for
recognition of a Palestine state, also fund the United Nations Relief & Works
Agency. UNRWA is an organization that keeps Palestinian Arabs shackled into
permanent refugee status, with growing numbers.
There is a massive elephant in the room in recognizing a
Palestinian state and, at the same time, paying huge sums of money supporting a
UN agency for Palestinians who are not refugees from Palestine but are, in
fact, living in their desired homeland, namely Palestinian-controlled areas of
Gaza and the West Bank.
How can someone be a refugee and yet live in the “homeland”
he or she desires?
This is the question that taxpayers in Sweden, Britain,
Ireland, Spain, France, who have voted on recognition of a “Palestine,” should
be asking of their politicians. Surely, such a vote, once made, must come with
consequences?
It’s bad enough that these parliaments pass an unconditional
vote for “Palestine” without including the demand that such as state
must recognize the right of the Jewish state of Israel to live in peace and
security, which they don’t.
It’s bad enough that they pass these votes without
conditioning their approval on the nature of what this “Palestine” would
be. Will it be a liberal democracy, or yet another troublesome radical Islamic
regime? Is this not important?
Does it not concern European lawmakers that they may be
voting into reality another Islamic monster that will disrespect its own people
and its neighbors in pursuit of an overriding ambition to eliminate Israel that
is clearly stated in both the Hamas and the PLO anti-Semitic, threatening,
charters?
The point I opened with shows the shallow-minded approach these
left-wing parliaments have employed when it comes to “symbolically”
voting their support for “Palestine” unconditionally.
Take Sweden, for example.
Wilf and Schanzer mentioned that Sweden is the fifth largest donor country to UNRWA
with a massive $54.4 million last year.
Sweden reckons that “Palestine”
fulfills the criteria of statehood
under international law of territory, a people, and a government.
Putting aside that it actually fails on all three counts; let’s assume that
Sweden is correct. If this is the case, why do they need to fund a refugee
agency that caters for millions of Palestinians, not distant refugees, but
actually living under the auspices and governance of Palestinian leadership in
either the Gaza Strip under the rule of Palestinian Hamas, or in the West Bank
under the administration of the Palestinian Authority? Many, if not most, are
the third and fourth generation of original refugees, a status that does not
apply to any of the sixty million refugees in the world today.
I am tempted to use the analogy of not being able to be “almost pregnant.” Either you are, or you aren't, a refugee. In this case, how can you be
a refugee while living in the country you yearn for?
Or maybe the
Swedish, Irish, British, French, Belgium politicians are more devious than we
thought. Maybe they are not the altruistic peace-makers they pretend to be, but
are deliberately helping to perpetrate the “refugee” issue in support
of a Palestinian narrative that demands these millions be “returned” to Israel as part of their further aim to eliminate the “Zionist invasion,” i.e., the death of Israel.
That is a
cornerstone of both the PLO and Hamas Charters that have been supported by
left-wing activists, some of whom sit in European parliaments, for decades.
This question still
lingers. Are European politicians ignorant of the facts? Or do they share a
dangerous Palestinian Arab agenda to reduce and eventually eliminate the Jewish
State of Israel?
Barry Shaw is the
author of “Israel Reclaiming the
Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com He is also
the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue
Center at Netanya Academic College, Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment